One of the great guidelines about any wiki is that you only have to contribute what you know or are willing to learn about — there's no assigned reading or assigned articles. Everyone is permitted to choose their topics and what articles they'll write themselves or expand.

One corollary to this policy is that Memory Alpha strives for completeness — we want to cover as much information about Star Trek in as great detail as "humanly possible".

Don't just make arbitrary deletions to an article — instead, preserve the text on the talk page or on a new archive page for future reference. Alternatives include rephrasing the content, moving text to a different article, or adding more of what you think is important.'

Reference deleted content on the talk page.

If you find false information in an article, mention it on the talk page and describe the corrections — because if one person believed it was true, chances are someone else believed it was true, too. Preserving comments helps inform later contributors.

While you're on the subject, here's a few policies for you to remember as well.

If you use part of a copyrighted work under "fair use," or if you obtain special permission to use a copyrighted work from the copyright holder under the terms of our license, you must make a note of that fact (along with names and dates). It is our goal to be able to freely redistribute as much of Memory Alpha's material as possible (within the limits of copyright law), so original images and sound files licensed under the Creative Commons License or in the public domain are greatly preferred to copyrighted media files used under fair use.

Never use materials that infringe the copyrights of others. This could create legal liabilities and seriously hurt the project. If in doubt, write it yourself.

Note that copyright law governs the creative expression of ideas, not the ideas or information themselves. Therefore, it is perfectly legal to read an encyclopedia article or other work, reformulate it in your own words, and submit it to Memory Alpha.

On Memory Alpha, no personal attacks will be permitted whatsoever. No insults, no flaming, no trolling, or any other forms of offensive behavior. Period. We are a community brought together by our common interest in Star Trek — although the discussion might get a little hot at times because of differing opinions, remember, this is all for fun!

One of the primary goals of Memory Alpha is to inform and entertain the readers. This means that long, rambling sentences should be avoided, and that excruciating detail may often be unnecessary to appropriately cover a subject. Of course, this should be left to the judgment of the contributor.
Consider adding a touch of humor to your article! Of course, most readers are visiting Memory Alpha because they're already fans of Star Trek, but some extra humor may help give your article that special extra something. A little irony can go a long way.
When you write (or rewrite) an article, make sure that you take the time to balance the page's appearance and organization. For example, don't write a few short sentences of text and then include a long list of links — if a visitor wants to read an article on a certain subject, they would much rather find concrete paragraphs providing information instead of a list of links to other pages!
Naturally, there are exceptions to this rule. Most often, a brand-new article (or episode listing) will have only a small amount of information about it, and a long list of references to other articles. It's okay to have an unbalanced page initially — as long as you (or someone else) fixes it later.

Because everyone is allowed to edit the talk pages, the discussions can sometimes get a little chaotic. It's important that everyone sign their posts on talk pages so that individual statements can be attributed to specific users.

Signing your posts is easy: use three tildes (~~~) to sign just your name, or four tildes (~~~~) to sign your name PLUS the current date and time.

Hey, Mike. I just wanted to apologize about reverting your comment on Ten Forward. You apparently put your signature in the section heading by accident, which messed up the section, so I reverted it, but I didn't see that you had also posted a comment. Tim has since reverted it to include your comment and your sig in the right place. Again, my apologies. --From Andoria with Love 06:22, 15 Dec 2005 (UTC)

I don't know if this is M/A or just me, but, sidebars aren't showing on my screen. The code is still there and seems OK. I may be having problems with my computer, but it seems to only affect M/A. Please reply.--Mike Nobody=/\= 21:04, 29 Dec 2005 (UTC)

Hi Mike. All I can definitely say is that it is not MA - the sidebars work just fine for me. It sounds as if the page doesn't load completely, which could have a variety of reasons, including temporary issues with MA's servers and/or your internet connection. It might also be a problem with the CSS files: click on the following link and force a reload of that page (Ctrl+F5, probably): [4]. If all this doesn't help, perhaps you can describe your problem in more detail or make a screenshot? -- Cid Highwind 21:51, 29 Dec 2005 (UTC)